Ms. Milena Stefanova is the Operations Manager for Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, based in Dar-Es-Salaam.
Ms. Stefanova is a Bulgarian national with more than 20 years of development experience. She joined the World Bank in 2005 as a lawyer in the Legal Department, working on governance, justice reform, environmental, and social issues during 2005-2009. She has since held a number of positions across the Bank, including an Operations Officer in Vanuatu in the Pacific Region, leading a program on governance, justice, and land reform during 2009-2014; a Senior Operations Officer with the Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group in Washington D.C between 2014-2019, providing technical advice to sectoral teams on policy dialogue, project design, and implementation arrangement; and a Conflict Adviser for Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan unit based in Ethiopia during 2019-2020. Her most recent assignment was as Country Manager for Sudan during 2020-2024, where she led the re-engagement of the Bank in Sudan focused on arrears clearance, debt relief, and economic reforms, while maintaining an active engagement in times of ongoing fragility and crisis.
Prior to joining the Bank, Ms. Stefanova worked for a private law firm in Bulgaria, the United Nations Mission in Timor-Leste, and Amnesty International in Washington DC. Ms. Stefanova holds a LLM degree in Public International Law from the of University of Helsinki; a post-graduate degree in English and European Law from University of Cambridge; and a Master of Laws from the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria.